If there’s one aspect of entertainment reporting culture I, an entertainment reporter, have grown to resent, it’s the phenomenon of the trailer teaser. Not a teaser trailer—a short trailer that’s usually the first bit of promo we get—I’m talking about the incredibly short sizzle reel that says “look out for the full trailer in a few days.” Why do we need that? What purpose does it serve? Especially when we get so little information out of them?!
Well, on Monday, May 8th we’ll have a new full trailer for Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049, only in this 15-second teaser for the trailer, we actually get info we didn’t already have!
On top of the utterly gorgeous images we get to see—and yes, I’m including close-ups of a furious Ryan Gosling among those—there’s a few important things we can glean. First and foremost, we see Robin Wright’s character, who still doesn’t have a name on the official credits list, and hear her say, “There is an order to things. That’s what we do here. We keep order.” From where she is in the frame, with the rain falling on a window in the foreground, we can also see Gosling over her shoulder, in what looks like an office. It would appear she’s his boss and is giving him a lecture on the purpose of the Blade Runners themselves.
As fans of any form of near-future science fiction very well know, whenever an authority figure talks about order and control, we can pretty much assume that will ultimately be antithetical to the protagonist’s eventual mentality. The original Blade Runner was about realizing what it means to be “real” as a living being, whether manufactured or born. I can assume Gosling’s Officer K will similarly learn that being real also means freedom.
It also becomes apparent that there’s more action in Blade Runner 2049 than there was in the original, but my hope is that the movie doesn’t turn into a moody shoot-em-up and focuses instead on the larger themes. Seeing as American Gods co-showrunner Michael Green is involved, and Villeneuve’s previous films have all been deeply concerned with themes, our hopes are high on that end.
But what do you think? Am I reading way too much into a 15-second tease? (Yes, the answer is yes.) Let me know in the comments below!
Images: Warner Bros
Kyle Anderson is the Associate Editor for Nerdist and spends way too much time thinking about science fiction. Follow him on Twitter!
